


i hold with those who favour fire

by MaryPSue



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Phoenixes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-25
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2019-05-28 16:43:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15053486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryPSue/pseuds/MaryPSue
Summary: Edith falls, and rises.





	i hold with those who favour fire

**Author's Note:**

> From a tumblr prompt for a monster+character meme I did a while ago - "Edith & phoenix". I got a little carried away.

Lucille’s hands move, and she watches them, as though in a dream, as they reach out and shove the new wife squarely in the shoulders. Edith seems to hover, suspended, for a moment, arms outstretched as though to catch Lucille and pull her down with her, and then - she’s gone. Her nightdress trails through the air behind her, a filmy white ghost, and then it is gone as well. 

Lucille pauses a moment, trying to catch her breath. Her heart thunders in her breast. She could swear she feels Edith’s outstretched hands at her throat.

When at last she collects herself enough to approach the railing, to lean over and see what she’s wrought, Edith is lying in a pile of leaves and fallen snow. Caught in a beam of silvery light, she seems the slumbering princess from some children’s tale, her golden hair and diaphanous gown arrayed around her like silken raiments, resting on a cushion provided by Nature itself. Her face is serene, almost beatific, beautiful even in death. Lucille thinks, for the first time, that she understands why a stranger of royal blood might stop to kiss lips like those.

She thinks, for the first time, that she understands her brother’s weakness as regards this one.

Perhaps she looks too long. Perhaps her eyes are playing tricks on her, perhaps it is only the lingering warmth of the body melting away the fallen snow, but it seems there are more autumn leaves gathered under Edith’s frozen form, more reds and golds spilling from beneath her nightdress and her hands and her golden head. The leaves flicker and dance, as though caught in a high October wind, though any such wind would be stymied by Allerdale’s protective walls.

It isn’t until the hem of Edith’s gown begins to blacken that Lucille sees that what she had taken for autumn leaves are flames.

Lucille’s hands clench upon the railing, and she has to force them to release their grip as though they belong to someone else. Wild thoughts race across her mind, terror whipping her into a frenzy. One thought shouts louder than all the rest – the house, her home, Allerdale is in danger. It is all that she and Thomas have left. It cannot burn. It  _must_  not burn.

She takes no more than a single step back from the railing, though, before the flames leap into the air. A tower of fire sears Lucille’s face, singes her eyelashes, forces her back against the wall. Her heel comes down on something soft, a curtain perhaps, and she nearly loses her balance, but she dares not take her eyes from the flames.

There is a shape at the heart of the fire. A shape, charred quite black, all but unrecognisable as a human figure. Lucille is no stranger to the horrors of death, is not of such a nervous disposition that the sight of a disfigured body would shock her, but there is something about this withering shape that strikes some ungodly chord inside her. She wants nothing more than to be away from it, never to lay eyes on it again. She cannot drag her eyes from it.

The figure in the fire turns towards Lucille, with dreadful slowness, its small blackened head lifting as it turns. One arm extends, one finger unfolds, pointed right at her heart. An accusation. A curse.

She wants – she fears for – Thomas.

At last, whatever spell the fire has held Lucille under seems to break. She turns toward the stairs, towards the lower floor and the fire, towards some vain, lingering hope of saving her home – and once more finds herself frozen in place.

The thing that stands before her, between her and the stairs, is just as twisted and emaciated as the figure in the fire, a skeleton draped in red that might be blood or might be the clay earth on which Allerdale Hall rests. Even with its skull half-caved in, its eye sockets gaping empty, Lucille knows its gaze is fixed, unwavering, upon her face.

She knows that injury. It was the first fatal wound she ever inflicted.

Lucille takes one stumbling step backwards, feeling the searing heat against her back. When she turns towards the stairs to the floor above, though, another red-dripping figure confronts her, skeletal and monstrous. Lucille spins, but the balcony is suddenly crowded, emaciated figures and accusing fingers. They push forward, jostling each other, pressing against Lucille. The stench of rot, of death, fills her nostrils, all but driving out the scorching smell of the fire behind her. The heat against her back is almost unbearable, and yet the nightmare figures before her keep advancing.

Lucille’s back strikes the railing.

She fancies, for a moment, that she hears Thomas’ voice calling her name, but the sound is drowned out by the roar of the flames. Fire is crawling up the curtains, now, licking through the railings of the stairs. Its hissing, crackling voice is everywhere, now, all but human. Or perhaps that sound is the whispers of the dead.

“Stay away from me,” Lucille says, hands gripping the railing. The wood is scorching hot on her bare flesh. Under the fingers of her right hand, it crumbles to ash. “Stay away! You’re nothing! You’re  _dead_!”

The dead press closer.

Lucille presses back against the railing, and suddenly her sleeve is an inferno. She screams, flapping to try to put it out, a searing line of pain climbing her arm. The railing behind her wobbles ominously, and her skirt ignites, and within seconds Lucille is gowned in flame.

The railing collapses, at last, with a sigh of crumbling timber. Lucille’s flailing feet dance onto empty air. The dead crowd the landing, staring down as she falls.

Before she can reach the ground, though, Lucille Sharpe is enfolded in wings of flame.  

Around her, Allerdale Hall burns.


End file.
